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With the founding of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (NHRF), the eminent scholar of Modern Greek Studies and one of NHRF’s co-founders, Konstantinos Th. Dimaras, set as a central programmatic goal what he called the “national inventory”—the systematic collection and critical publication of primary sources in the form of corpora. Although Dimaras originally conceived this “national inventory” within the field of Modern Greek Studies, the same principle soon inspired the Foundation’s other major center for historical research, the Center for Byzantine Research, and, in essence, was adopted two decades later by the founders of the Center for Greek and Roman Antiquity.
Much has changed since then—largely thanks to the successful realization of Dimaras’s vision, which laid the groundwork for the production of historical syntheses. Yet the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), unified in its current form since 2012, remains the leading center for the publication and documentation of primary sources in Greece and one of the foremost of its kind worldwide.
Over its sixty-five years of activity, the IHR has produced dozens—indeed, hundreds—of corpora of inscriptions, coins, archaeological records, manuscripts, documents, and other primary sources. It has compiled detailed catalogues of libraries and archives and extended its work to the systematic recording of oral testimonies. Keeping pace with technological advances, and without abandoning the printed form of scholarly publication, the Institute has also expanded into digital documentation, developing a rich array of digital databases and widening the dissemination of knowledge through online platforms.
This foundational work is reflected in the IHR’s first research cluster, “Primary Sources – Editing and Digital Documentation,” which brings together, across all three Sections of the Institute, the related research and documentation activities. The outcomes of this cluster form the essential foundation for the research conducted within the Institute’s four other thematic clusters.